The top mortgage lender in the United States, Fannie Mae, wants another $8.5 billion dollars to save its butt. This after reporting a loss of $6.5 billion during the first three months of 2011.
Fannie Mae blames the loss on credit expenses. They also blame falling home prices. If Fannie Mae gets the new bailout money (at taxpayer’s expense) it will make it the costliest government bailout, of a single company, in U.S. history; $99.7 billion.
“As the U.S. government continues to request accessibility to the Chinese market for its firms, we now raise a similar request on behalf of Chinese firms.”-Zhu Guangyao, Vice Finance Minister
For decades U.S. companies have been shipping off factories, and jobs, to China. Now China says the United States is blocking their attempts to bring factories and jobs to the U.S.
“We have received many complaints from Chinese companies that have met discrimination as they try to invest in the United States, even though the U.S. side has repeatedly stated that Chinese companies are welcome.”- Zhu Guangyao, Vice Finance Minister
Iranian investigator Majid Abhari, says he has proof that drugs being brought into Iran, through Afghanistan, are being run by the CIA and Mossad. He has some convincing evidence.
First, traditionally opium, and marijuana/hash, were the drugs that came through. Now, Iranian drug police are confiscating morphine, crack and meth. Those drugs are considered “western” drugs and are not normally used by addicts in the region.
Second, Iranian police have discovered that transactions connected to the “western” drugs are being made with credit cards. Traditional drug dealers operate “cash only” businesses.
Iran claims to be the most active anti-drug enforcers in the world. Last year they seized 85% of the world’s illegal opium. In the past five years Iran has spent $50 million to fight drug trafficking from just Afghanistan. Iran also claims thousands of their anti-drug police have been killed.
Iranian police say drug trafficking from Afghanistan has jumped 40 times higher after the U.S. invaded . According to the UN, Afghan opium production was at 185 metric tons (204 U.S. tons) per year, before the U.S. invaded. The United Nations says opium production is now at 3,400 tons (3748 U.S. tons) per year (in 2007 it hit a record of 8,200 metric tons [9039 U.S. tons]).
Iran should know how the CIA and Mossad operates, after all, during the reign of the pro-U.S. Shah the CIA, and Mossad, trained Iran’s intelligence agencies (especially the infamous SAVAK).
IRAN SAYS U.S. & ISRAEL BEHIND REGIONAL DRUG TRAFFICKING
Mexico City announced they are working on a way to put their earthquake warning system on social media.
The city’s residents have been complaining that the current quake warning system is not reliable. If Japan can have quake warning systems, and even Mexico City, why doesn’t the United States?
Two Muslim men were kicked off a Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight, in Memphis, Tennessee. They passed all security checks, but the pilots refused to fly with them on board.
TSA officials in Atlanta, Georgia, confirmed the incident.
The cost of living in the U.S. rose at its fastest pace since December 2009 in the year ended in March, the same month when Chinese consumer prices rose by the most since 2008.-Bloomberg report
Rising commodity prices can bring inflation. Commodity prices go up when there is an expected higher demand than supply (or speculators playing the market). Today, May 5, commodity prices are falling.
Some people blame an increase in the value of the U.S. dollar, but has it really gone up that much? When the U.S. dollar is up, it makes commodities that much more expensive on the world market, because commodities are traded in U.S. dollars: “The common denominator for all the commodities selling today is the strength of the dollar.”-Bayram Dincer, LGT Capital Management Ltd
Others are pointing out that commodity traders are realizing that the world’s economy is still bad, and that the average person can’t afford to pay higher prices. That means demand will go down.
If you buy commodities (oil, gas, metals, food stuffs, etc) why bid higher when there’s a good change you can’t sell it on the retail market? Some analysts think this will be the crash of the commodities (which is a good thing for us little guys): “This could be one of the most severe corrections that we’ve seen over the last year. If things get really bad, we could possibly retrace half of the rally of the past six to nine months.”-Sean Corrigan, Diapason Commodities Management SA
How about the fact that a little known company, Glencore, who turns out to have a lot of say in the commodities market, has told their clients to be “underweight” when it came to commodities. Glencore expects prices to actually go up in the next 12 months. Being “underweight” means to sell off your investments, so maybe what we’re seeing is an intentional, and temporary, sell off. A sell off would drive prices down.
Glencore is a private company in Switzerland. The company is valued at $60 billion. What do they do? Buy and sell commodities.
Glencore is the world’s biggest commodities trader, buying and selling much of the world’s wheat, corn, rice, sugar and edible oils. They also buy and sell minerals; metals, oil, coal. In fact they control 3% of the world’s daily oil supply.
Because Glencore is a privately held company, no one has heard of them. Why are they in the news now? Glencore wants to become even more powerful, so they are going public, offering public stocks in their company for the first time. For those of you who think ,”If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”, the public stocks offering will take place at the end of May, in the London and Hong Kong stock markets.
Glencore has on it’s board some controversial people, including people with their hands in the pockets of U.S. politicians, so do your research.
The U.S. doesn’t need to lose anymore jobs, but Kraft just announced they will build a new plant in Brazil.
“Brazil is one of 10 priority developing markets where we’re making big bets. Today, we’re among the fastest growing consumer goods companies in markets like Brazil, India and China. We’re excited to build on what’s working by making our biggest investment in Brazil in more than 10 years!”-Sanjay Khosla, Kraft Foods
Kraft will build an $80 million chocolate factory in Pernambuco, Brazil. They hope to have it up and running by 2012.
Ever since the announcement that Osama bin Laden was dead, the Obama administration has been flip flopping on the details.
First they said bin Laden was killed in a fire fight. Then they said he was resisting, but not armed (how does a sick 54 year old man resist without weapons?). They said he used a wife as a human shield, they flopped and said she willingly rushed at the U.S. forces. First they said she was dead, now she was just wounded in the leg.
What’s up Obama? I thought you guys watched the whole thing live? You issued a pic of your cabinet supposedly watching the event live?
Now Pakistani officials say Osama bin Laden’s young teen daughter witnessed the whole thing and says her father did not resist, and that U.S. forces killed him AFTER they got him on the helicopter. Is this the real reason they dumped his body in the ocean, to cover up how he was killed?
“Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the U.S. forces and their choppers.”-Pakistani security official
Pakistani officials, and locals living in the area, say only the U.S. forces were doing the shooting, no shots came from anyone in the bin Laden compound.
Here are the latest statements from Obama’s officials: “…rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed.” “Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.” –White House Press Secretary Jay Carney
Many media outlets are claiming that Americans loved the royal wedding because millions watched it. This is a clear case of the main stream media manipulating data to mislead. Yes millions did watch, but not anywhere near the majority of the people in the U.S., in fact it was a small minority.
Television ratings company, Nielsen, said only 23 million people (Nielsen used the term “viewers”, not to be confused with “households”) in the United States watched the royal wedding on TV. That’s only 7.4% of the population, the official U.S. population is about 310 million. To put it another way; at least 90% did NOT watch.
In fact when you look at “viewer” ratings for television in the U.S., you’ll realize that, when compared to the total population of the country, not that many people actually watch TV.